Job Dissatisfaction

changes in lifePosted by: name withheldTue Dec 12, 2006 11:31 pm (PST) Hi friends,keeping the job hopping tradition of our batch alive i switched to name of company in a Product management role for their I banking division at blore.This is the latest in one of many emails that I have seen in the group mailing list for my batch at IIMK. It set off a chain of thoughts which are centered around the one question that has kept cropping up in random discussions of my batchmates ever since we passed out in March 2006 - "are we really happy with the prestigious jobs we took during placements?"If the multitude of such emails is any indication, the answer is more no than otherwise. In fact, in a few cases, the haste to switch jobs has been so extreme that it makes one wonder if one day on the previous job was spent with any degree of happiness.There are many facets to this matter, in my opinion. Firstly, I am convinced that the mad rush that is placements at an IIM is one of the prime reasons that goads each student into pushing for the most high paying job that he can land. Furthermore, most of us tend to get swayed by the brand of the companies that come to campus during those fateful adrenaline-rushed hours and end up taking offers that we were not even contemplating before placements kicked off.After this, we join our respective companies, with visions of making a difference and a mark for ourselves. We see inefficiency, apathy, even absolute stupidity in the way things are being done in our companies, and we see immense potential to improve almost everything around us. But we are not allowed to do so. Whether it is the meaningless roles we are assigned or the totally unresponsive people around us, our efforts run against a wall. And to make matters worse, we also want to ensure an adequate work-life balance and are hence unwilling to give more than a pre-determined number of hours to our work. In short, we are unhappy with our work and yet we are unwilling to pay the price of making the effort to improve the same. And add to the same the extraneous factors like the unhappiness of not living in our hometowns for most of us, the pull from rival companies, the jealousy factor of batchmates drawing higher salaries, and probably many others that I am not aware of, and you have a heady mix that is quite capable of swaying the most level headed among us.I am sure that the scenario is similar for ex-students of any premier B-School in India. But the question that remains unanswered is "What is the way out of this?"

Posted by Aditya C on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 at 12:36 AM |Permalink